Eddie Murphy Once Joked That Shaggy Owed Him Royalties For ‘It Wasn’t Me’

If you ask Shaggy, his biggest hit It Wasn’t Me wouldn’t have existed if it weren’t for Eddie Murphy—in fact, the comedian once joked that the Jamaican superstar owed him royalties.

During a recent interview with VLAD TV, Shaggy recalled that after watching Murphy’s 1987 standup RAW back in the day, he decided to snag a line from the comedy routine. “I watched RAW. I’m a big fan of Eddie Murphy, he did that joke about ‘it wasn’t me’,” he said.

“The thing about It Wasn’t Me is that the subject matter is so relatable; it’s either you’re banging, you know somebody is banging or you wish you were banging, some banging going on,” Shaggy added, which was the essence of that part of Murphy’s routine.

The concept came to fruition with singer RikRok in late 2000, and after a fascinating series of events, it became Shaggy’s best-selling song, topping the charts in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Austria, France, Ireland, and the Netherlands.

The Angel singer met Murphy some years later in the Bahamas and finally got the chance to tell him that his RAW routine had inspired his hit track.

“I was with Eddie Murphy in the Bahamas … he was at his brother’s show and I saw him, we were in the VIP together,” Shaggy recalled. “I came over and told him the story, and he was like ‘Ah! You owe me royalties.’”

According to Shaggy, they had a laugh about it.

Despite his incredible success with It Wasn’t Me and the Hot Shot album, the music veteran believes he was simply a vessel in bringing the genre to the rest of the world.

“People always say that, ‘you wrote all these really big hits,’ and I’d say I don’t write any of them,” he remarked. “There is a bigger being that [used] me as a vessel to write that. I can’t come up with something as genius as It Wasn’t Me, that’s a higher being, that’s some ordained sh!t. I don’t take that for granted at all,” he added.

Shaggy admitted that he has yet to recreate the magic that It Wasn’t Me had when it was released more than 20 years ago. “To this day, I’ve recounted my steps that day and still can’t come up with another It Wasn’t Me, like that,” he said.

“Those were magic moments, those are moments that were spiritually funded through you to create life-changing music. I say life-changing because it changed a lot of people’s lives.”

The Oh Carolina singer did, however, attempt to prolong the popularity of It Wasn’t Me in 2001 when he wrote the “answer record”.  Unknown to many, Shaggy revealed that he wrote the lyrics to the single Son of A B!tch – the flipside to the original saga, and brought on Dancehall diva Lady Saw to record it.

“I wrote it [Son of A B!tch] and brought her on it and recorded her and everything,” he said, adding it was “the answer to it [It Wasn’t Me].” The single however, didn’t quite slap as hard as its predecessor.